31 July 2010

Frigidaire.

Here’s the thing about living in an old apartment building. It’s all cute and charm when you first move in. A lot of oooh, look at the rounded doorways! And ahh, look at the beautiful leaded glass windows! When I first moved in to my apartment and you asked me about it, I would have waxed poetic about the wood floors, the layout, and just about everything else. Even the quirks were adorable: the fact that there is no light in the bathroom? It’s just mood lighting when you’re taking a shower. The fridge on top of the counter? Well, when the place was built they didn’t have fridges; look at that cool ice box in the cupboard. An ice box!

{our little foyer, complete with a cubby-hole that just begs for Holy Water and a Blessed Virgin, if I were that Catholic. I'm not, so there's the more-decorative-less-religious Mexican cross.}

Now fast forward 2 years, and while I still have a fond place in my heart for my little apartment home, the quirks have lost their luster. The birds that nest in our non-working kitchen fan? Annoying as shit as 5 in the morning. The cupboard with 80 years of paint on them? Man, I wish they would close. And the fridge on the counter. Well… that, mis amigos, is where this little blog post begins.

{Fridge. On top of counters. With drawers that don't close all the way.}

In our slightly-bigger-than-a-college-fridge-but-not-as-large-as-a-normal-fridge, there is an itty-bitty freezer. One has to be on a stool to reach said freezer. Well, some people have to be on a stool. I need a ladder to get into it, which is why anything freezer related has to be left to Amos. Sorry to be the damsel in distress here, but 5 feet, 2 inches will not get you ice cream in my house. For that, you need a big, strong man… or be be over 5’5”. Thems just the facts of life our abode.

Anyhoo, the freezer has been defrosted 2 times since we lived there. The first was when Amos took a knife, stood on the necessary stool, and went to town on the big ice chunks. As he plugged in a hair-dryer to heat the remaining frost, (the cord went across the kitchen and plugged in on the opposite counter tops) I decided to get the hell out of dodge and go shopping. Sometimes I know when space is necessary for us to continue our relationship, and this was one of those times.

Round 2 was more of an accident. Last February, we were flying back to the Midwest to visit my grandma. As we grabbed something out of the fridge on the way out of town, we must have accidentally hit this little red button. We must not have noticed it because when we returned 4 days later, we found out that the red button defrosted the freezer. Our tip-off? Something about a puddle of water on the floor and streams of water coming from the bottom of the fridge down the counter tops.

To summarize: fridge: 2. Amos & Shean: 0.

We're on to round 3. We went to open our freezer last week and it had frozen totally shut. The time had come to defrost the sucker. I was feeling good. We had the knowledge that there was a red button in our fridge and we now knew what it did. The tricky part? While there is a drip tray under the freezer, it can't be removed because our freezer is on a freaking counter top and doesn't open all the way. But we weren't going to be defeated. We're not amatures at this old-apartment-thing. I cleaned out the fridge & laid towels on all the racks to sop up water. Then we draped a towel from inside the freezer tray down to the other towels, so water could be absorbed down. Then... I pushed the button.

As the ice melted, the towels slowly filled up. The they rapidly filled up. Amos only had one instance of taking a knife to the ice; other than that, it was pretty hands-off affair. About 2 days in, the water stopped coming. It was just about done. I was ready to call it good and start repacking, but Amos wasn't going to be fooled. Standing on his tip-toes, he looked and saw the drip tray, while not filling up with water, was quite full with a big ice slab. With some creative tilting, we broke it and got most of it out. Success! We can now use our freezer and have a nice cold fridge. The aftermath? I only had to wash about 9 towels. I'll call it a win.